Reactors Shut Down

BUSINESS BRIEFING

February 19, 1998

Florida Power & Light shut down a reactor at both its Turkey Point and its St. Lucie nuclear power plants earlier this week.

The Florida utility said it manually shut down its Turkey Point 3 reactor to repair its turbine control system. A company spokeswoman said it did not expect it to be a long-term outage. FPL shut down its St. Lucie 1 reactor to replace a cooling pump, and a spokeswoman said the company expects that reactor to be off-line for about a week.

Big 3 back minority plan

The Clinton administration has reached an agreement with the Big Three automakers to increase their purchases from minority-owned companies by nearly $3 billion by the year 2001, officials from the administration and the automakers said.

Representatives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will sign an agreement today committing the automakers to increase purchases from minority contractors to 5 percent of total procurement from 4.2 percent. The amount of contracts is scheduled to increase incrementally over three years starting this year.

The program will increase the amount of contract awards from the Big Three automakers to minority companies to $8.8 billion a year from the current $5.9 billion.

Shake-up at Fidelity

Fidelity Investments shuffled the managers of several mutual funds and pared the duties of veteran George Vanderheiden. Vanderheiden, a member of the board of directors of Fidelity's parent company FMR Corp., will focus on managing three mutual funds with assets totaling about $29 billion rather than six funds with $43 billion in assets.

The 27-year Fidelity veteran said the reduced workload will free up more time for him to focus on stock-picking and to try to beat the Standard & Poor's 500.

Slate, Microsoft's struggling weekly online magazine, said it is going to start charging subscribers next month. Starting March 9, surfers who need to get their online dose of news, politics and culture in Slate will have to fork over $19.95 per year or $1.95 per week.

BusinessWeek Online said it will start charging starting next week. The rates will be $39.95 a year for the online version and $42.95 for the printed and online versions.

Temps win ruling

Temporary employees working at Microsoft are eligible for benefits under a class-action lawsuit against the company as long as they meet certain conditions, a federal judge has ruled. The judge said a previous court mandate approving the class action ``applies to all plaintiffs who were common-law employees and all periods in which they were common-law employees.''

The judge rejected Microsoft's contention that the lawsuit should be limited only to independent contractors who worked at the company from 1987 to 1990. Microsoft won't say how many temporaries it has, but estimates put the number at 3,500 to 5,000.

Media review delayed

The Federal Communications Commission, in a last-minute decision, delayed a review of media ownership rules, saying it needed more time to prepare. The agency initially had scheduled a commission vote on the inquiry at today's public meeting.

Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns the Sun-Sentinel, might benefit from the review because the FCC, among other things, will look at whether it should relax or repeal a rule restricting a single person or group from owning both a TV station and a newspaper in the same market. Tribune acquired WDZL-Ch. 39 in Miami as part of its $1.1 billion acquisition of Renaissance Communications Corp. but must sell one by March 22 unless the rules are changed or it receives a waiver.